Contract Theory Based Incentive Scheme for Mobile Crowd Sensing Networks

Abstract

Mobile crowd sensing networks (MCSNs) have emerged as a promising paradigm to provide various sensing services. With the increasing number of mobile users, how to develop an effective scheme to provide the high-quality and secure sensing data becomes a new challenge. In this paper, we propose a contract theory based scheme to provide sensing service in MCSNs. At first, with the analysis of the interaction experience between the crowd sensing platform and mobile user, a trust scheme is introduced to guarantee the quality of sensing data by considering the direct trust and indirect trust. Next, according to the transaction between crowd sensing platform and mobile user, an optimal contract based on incentive scheme is designed to stimulate mobile users to participate in crowd sensing network, where the contract item can not only maximize the platform utility, but also satisfy individual rationality and incentive compatibility. Finally, the numerical results show that the proposal outperforms the conventional schemes.